


Nature vs Nuture. Trying Hearts (Hard Times Sequel)

by BloomingBenevolence



Category: Hard Times - Charles Dickens
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Has a different ending, Lousia deserves love, New trilogy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-02
Updated: 2020-08-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:40:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25664524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BloomingBenevolence/pseuds/BloomingBenevolence
Summary: The Classical story had a summary ending.But that ending wasn't fitting exactly. So this is my take plus a parallel to the original book. Louisa doesn't understand fanciful things and James isn't serious at all. It's a blast from the past
Relationships: Louisa Gradgrind/James Harthouse





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The Lit student in me has awake or maybe it was never dormant. There's so many other fanfics in my fanfic vault but here's the first. Hoe you enjoy. I know these tyes of stories aren't popular. So hey you ! (:3)

**_Book the 1 st: Ashes_ **

**_Chapter 1: The most needful things_ **

The day Louisa Gradgrind became Louisa Harthouse had arrived sooner than the lady had expected.

To think a few years ago she had been descending down a staircase and that very day she was dressed like a Greek goddess in wafting fabric, not of their time but personally requested by her future husband, James. No walls confined her now.

Her father’s formula of facts, figure and arithmetics hadn’t worked out. His eminently practical ways were their undoing. Ever since she collapsed at his feet. Her dear dad had embraced change like an old friend and been aiding her to the path of betterment step by step.

In her white dress Louisa anxiously awaited near the fire pacing back and forth. She took in gulps of air. Then she saw the inky smoke ruining the end of her pearly dress. Come what may she hoped he’d have her hand anyway.

Louisa never thought she’d remarry. Not after suffering as Loo Bounderby.

As a pawn in a contract. A tool to get a powerful son-in-law and brother-in-law.

He was as almost old as her father, for logic's sake. And he looked even older. She quaked at the though of the times they shared.

But she had found love in all sense of the word; At least she thought? it was her father’s last wish to follow through with her previous intentions. An attempt to make it right and reunite lovers. Sure he hadn’t believed in fancy matters but for his daughter he’d do anything even frolic in a circus. He was quite sentimental with his dearest child.

She wished her little brother, Tom could attend but like Bounderby he perished due to his pride. A glimmer she came to recognize in James but she’d help him through the darkest nights, the sample of vows she read were very fanciful and she wrote a logical one hopeful he'd like it . Hopefully, he'd like her.

James, oh her Jem. Thinking bout him made her like a flame. Warm, crackling alive onto the night, her features dusted with rosiness and made her roar with life and possibilities. Love was a gamble: what if it flickered out, what if this would burn them out?

No, the time for evaluation is over.

He was patient with her. And that was enough. Her emotions only came out with the symbolic flame as it was all she ever knew. She couldn’t prettily describe James well enough. No matter her being a model student, she had come to terms she’d never be a model lady. As long as he could except her broken pieces and respect her new values, she’d love him forever.

She sighed into her hands as she inspected the small band of gold. So intricate like Harthouse’s attempts to woo her.

She heard thump down the hallway. Little Jane, their flower girl.

Stone lodge was filled with fluffy rugs and plushy beds, all thanks to Sissy, her pseudo sister. She waited and waited for Sissy to apply her pastles and colours. Though both parties-James and Sissy- had remarked her face brightened at the thought of James.

He never called her ‘Loo’ like Bounderby and Tom, had he, she wouldn’t marry the man.

She smiles when she thinks about James. She skims her wedding invitation for the first time. It’s drafted by well-rounded Jane whom was a teenager.

‘Encloused guests and friends it is a pleasure to announce that

 **James Harthouse, Esquire** and **Louisa Gradgrind**

are to be wed at the Stone Lodge residence. ‘

Suddenly hands gripped hers in an instant and she screamed silenced by a gloved finger.

“Shhhh! My dearest Louisa, your sister shall end me if she happens upon us. Yet I – I cannot bear this long courtship. Forgive me for I have neglected you too long. My brother admissioned me to focus on parliament and sustain money for proper housing and not trotting from one hotel to the next.” James said.

He kisses her forehead and then both cheeks. Louisa feels heat of a flame but it wasn’t from the fire.

Sissy helped her loop her head around feelings for the most part, but so much was uncertain and undecided. To Louisa it drove her mad.

“James, I am not sure what to tell you. Or how to confess it. I left you and I am glad you returned. We restarted our relationship. I have not told you that I love you and I hope I my intentions are clear enough. You do matter to me…”

“My love, forgive me for I have been pondering what interests you for months on end yet have come empty handed. If you allow me to ask what interests you?” He grips her hand like a prayer.

“You don’t know? It’s you. It’s always been you…You interest me,” 

Jem is frozen in his spot. Holding her skirts she touches his forehead and neck{, checking his pulse}.Instantly he jolts.

“You flatter me…I cannot find the right words to say to describe you in any fragment, my dearest. If you let me, I rather show you.” His voice had a soft dreamlike touch to the end and the kindness and calm in it startled Louisa.

She looks away from him and onto the floor before going to poke at the fire. Embers fly out like stars in the night sky .

“Who’s stopping you?” She whispered, a foreign emotion bubbled in her. 

With a confident and fluid stride he crossed to her side and she stood stiffly with her hands at her said as if she were in a military. He looks down at her, smiling wide.

He drapes her hands upon the back of his neck and he pecks her on the lips slow at first but hurrying after realizing he’d been there too long and part quickly. It felt- natural like smoke accompanying fire .

He reaches the window.

“Art thou Romeo?” She says after vaguely recalling the play’s quote.

“What’s in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet” He shortened it and replied.

“My remarkable and beautiful wife.” He said before scaling the ivy.

Her mind corrected his statement- legally and religiously they had not been married yet.

But her heart kept beating faster and faster. She clutched her chest and stood fixated.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2: Father’s schoolhouse**

“My marvelous father-in-law, my compassionate mentor.” Lousia warms up when she hears praise for her father. She hands her James the tea she made and watches him passionately. “Has reached out with an offer I hadn’t the heart to refuse.”

He takes a long sip and puts the cup on the table next to where he sat on the soft sofa.

”You’ve captured all of my attention, release it so I may continue trying to be not so homely.”

“Homely! You are a rose-“

“I have innumerable thorns. Now may you tell me what father has offered? “

“Detailed movingly in these pages he wishes, for you his pride and joy to turn his system on its head. He’s offered me a position as Literature teacher. Granted I haven’t read in an eon I ventured the local library yet I hadn’t found a book. Years of your father’s views have swayed Coketown to a mechanized and factual era, now upturning and undermining his view proves as difficult as weeding a garden that lay dormant for years or a stopping a scandalous rumor.”

“All reigns must end and with that some things are forgotten in the tides of time.

“Mr. M'Choakumchild, the old fool inept to change was laid-off on the spot.”

“Do respect him, James” Louisa chimed in.

“His treatment of you has left a sour taste in my mouth and only the sweet syrup of revenge can quench my thirst. Or…” He suddenly stirred from the sofa, and sat up right and faced Louisa.

“No.” She said.

He said “But you haven’t even heard my plan.”

He looked at her as if she were the world. The person of his affections, not the object.

“Pray tell what you intent?”

“How bout you become a teacher also.” He says patting his pockets.

“Pardon?”

Her hair spilled over her shoulders in ringlets after she had took all bobby pins from the elaborately pinned bun (she learnt with Sissys help).

Her husband whirls out a cigar, twirls it around the same way she had seen elsewhere. Louisa’s pins drop to the floor leaving a side of her hair still in its up state and snatches it from him.

“Go right ahead, smoke yourself to ruin. {Leave me a young widow} Perhaps, I’m better suited being a widow!” Louisa snapped.

James looked dumbfound and gave her an inquiring look.

“Like ashy smoke tumbling out of a factory, it can cause tuberculosis. The poor soot-covered workers already condemned to such matters. You dare play with what has become many’s undoing?” She cast him a long glance before retreating to the window peering in the distance at the tumble of smoke in the distance rolling out of the factories. “So much is still unknown in our medicinal fields and others I do duly believe this where we are is a turning point in discovery but not the height.”

“Louisa-“

“James, please for my sake if not your own.”

“Louise, I promise I won’t if it bothers you so. ”

“Thank you.”

It startled her. No one had time for her yet all his time was hers. Should she believe him?


End file.
